Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Nov 18, 2004

A Look at JotSpot: WOM Marketing in a Blog World

Update on the collaborative wiki, I just got a note that because the JotSpot demo was so hot at the Web 2.0 Conference and somanybloggersblogged about it, they can't take on any more beta accounts until their next beta release - or roughly in about two weeks. (Yeah, it's pretty good sign for a company when your potential customer feels like they needed your product yesterday.)

OK, those weren't the exact words in the email message, but yes, the avalanche of beta account requests has something to do with their Web 2.0 launch. (Btw, their public relations agency warned they'd get buried in the big splash - "you'll just be a round-up story" - and advised them not to launch there). Well the demo wasn't ready earlier and they had no choice but to launch there; but it all worked out in their favor.

"There were a lot of bloggers and it just poofed! [imagine CEO Joe Kraus is making a big explosion gesture complete with sound effects]." Their demo hit a chord; bloggers gobbled it up and wrote about it. Thus ensued over 4000 beta account requests.

Kraus claims (in a one-to-one question I asked) that his blog really isn't part of a calculated marketing communications and PR strategy. He's been meaning to do a personal blog for over a year and a half, but the right theme or topic to focus on had eluded him. Calculated or not, it works. Several developers at the SDForum event clearly had read his blog and we got more scoop about the infamous Gates encounter in the post-presentation discussion.

During the presentation, the founders were clearly up on the blogosphere memes and framed the whole JotSpot story around the long tail of software. David Weinberger, design for hackability, Clay Shirky's Situated Software paper, and other clues were dropped that they read blogs and that they were hip to the technorati culture. (But really successful entrepreneurs in the tech biz have always remained fully aware of and anticipated the crest of the trends way before the blogosphere's existence.)

It's a little surreal "knowing" someone through their blog and then hearing them speak in person. I felt like I'd had a bit of an introduction in a way one normally doesn't meet a CEO. And not everyone will ever meet the CEO and founders that ought to. You can't exactly package up the presence, passion and enthusiam of the co-founders that is so transparent face-to-face - but a blog is the closest thing I've seen.

Just before this post I had to crank out a new bio for myself and I was hard pressed to speak corporate-ese - it's a bit scary (as if I'm losing some vital skill to function in normal society) but that professional distant sterile tone isn't as easy to crank out as it used to be. I truly think Kraus' personal blog made a difference - if even it gave JotSpot the tiniest competitive edge - when they said they were hiring Java developers. It's an employer's market these days, but still, the most talented aways have options. And so do customers, resellers, third-party developers, investors, and everyone else. They're tipping the scales in their favor.

Oh, and about that email. Just like Joe Kraus said, they answer all their customer service email personally because he acknowledges people will cut you some slack with product flawsif there is a real human interacting with you and not just an automated formulatic reply.

Real takeaway: Without a real product hitting a real need, JotSpot certainly would have been another buried blurb in a round-up story about Web 2.0. Amplified word of mouth rests on a foundation of having a story begging to be told in the first place. Oh, and the founders have internalized the lessons of Excite's Web 1.0 days and in the process have created a lightweight (prefer agile term myself) operations and business model that leverages a platform play with a human touch.

Comments

One caveat I would place on the success of JotSpot is that it is currently free. Would they be getting as many account inquiries if it weren't? I believe the business model is a $5/user/month fee. JotSpot is a very nice, externally managed (outsourced :), wiki. But is it worth $5 bucks a month per employee?

I've got a beta account to track a project I'm working on, but I'm not going to pay if/when they start charging. Shoot, I've already got a web server running, all I have to do is find a wiki package to fire up along side it.

The problem I see is that JotSpot and wikis are geared to a certain type of people and many of them will roll there own wiki rather than pay for it. Sure, some people will pay just like some do for blogging, but the one-to-many vs. many-to-many factor comes into play.

Some people will pay for blogging because they see a value in specific features. The only person who pays is the blogger. A wiki sets up a many-to-many community that is fundamentally about the free exchange of ideas (both free as in speech and free as in beer). Each member of the community has to pay their association fee to be a part of a JotSpot community which seems unlikely to happen. I'm not convinced that companies will pay for a wiki either. The ones that find value in them probably have some spare machines and a sysadmin who could set one up in a couple hours.

JotSpot has some extras like the calendar, recruit tracking, bug tracking, etc. but unless they are going to give full blown implementations or have tight integration with standard packages, why would anyone bother with them?

Hey, I'm sure I could be wrong. I've never built one successful company. However, as we know from the bubble, a cool technology doesn't make a successful business (Think zaplets). Wikis are cool and JotSpot takes them to the next level. I just don't see the business as a slam dunk.

Good points. I agree that if it were simply a wiki it would only be mildly interesting.

Anyway, this post focuses on the outbound marketing strategy, but your comment triggers a thought that it would be worthwhile to cover in a separate post (next week) why I think it's intriguing from a product, target market, and strategic business point of view.

On the per-seat issue, they said that 'guest' accounts are free (thus, only named accounts would be charged).

One hint to their business strategy is they have a very different target market than you might suspect; they are targetting what Clayton Christensen (great books, btw) calls a non-consuming market. The Long Tail of software is another hint and so too Clay's Situated Software paper.